Unrest of ’68 replaced with near apathy

Tuesday

Aug 26, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 26, 2008 at 10:51 PM

A lot of unrest simmered in the American political cauldron as the Democrats prepared for their 1968 National Convention in Chicago, causing the conflict to boil over into violence between protesters and police, local Democrats say.

Michelle Anstett

A lot of unrest simmered in the American political cauldron as the Democrats prepared for their 1968 National Convention in Chicago, causing the conflict to boil over into violence between protesters and police, local Democrats say.

Neither Lyle Johnson nor Caroline Porter, both Democratic members of the Knox County Board, were present during the convention, but they watched in horror with the rest of America as violence took over the Windy City for five days. Anti-war protesters, winding up a year that saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, converged on Chicago to express their dissatisfaction with the policies of then-President Lyndon B. Johnson.

“Society as we knew it in the 1950s was completely changing,” said Porter, who was president of the Rockford chapter of the League of Women Voters at the time. “A lot of people were just kind of awakening to a lot of old habits and stereotypes and policies that were just unequal and unfair and lopsided.”

Through the days of violence, some of which was televised by media outlets already in town for the convention, more than 100 police officers and 100 protesters were injured. Hundreds more protesters were arrested, including the “Chicago Seven.”

The Chicago Seven were a group of young people, many of them leaders of various protest groups, who gathered nearly a year before the convention to spread the word to others that they should protest in Chicago.

Following the convention, an inquest was held into the city’s response to the protesters and the violence that occurred. Mayor Richard J. Daley and the Chicago Police Department were found at fault.

“One of the things I remember the most was just the Chicago Police Department’s total out-of-control actions,” Johnson explained. “My boss was in Chicago at that time (and he) slept in his car in a parking lot because he didn’t dare to move.”

Johnson, who once marched with King, is a staunch supporter of non-violent tactics, but he also sees that the happenings at the 1968 Democratic National Convention were necessary for changing the political structure of this country.

The Democrats went from having politicians elect the presidential nominee at the convention to letting the delegates, guided by the decisions made by the voters in their districts, decide the nominee.

“There’s an underlying anger (today), certainly, but not the vocal anger there was at the time,” Johnson said. “People don’t feel as endangered as they were at that time. Nobody’s kid’s going to get drafted. (The war is) not hitting us as hard as it did in the ’60s.”

Porter agreed, saying that, even though Americans are unhappy with everything from the economy to education to the war, there no longer is the feeling that being vocal about those complaints is going to make a difference.

“They just don’t think they can make any difference,” she said of the American people. “I think we have to work very hard not to get apathetic. I think that’s a problem today.

“Politicians have always got to listen better than they do. It’s a huge responsibility for citizens to keep up-to-date and to be informed. It’s not easy, but it has to be done.”